IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v310y2022ics0277953622006049.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Income, wealth, and Black-White disparities in cognition

Author

Listed:
  • Glei, Dana A.
  • Lee, Chioun
  • Weinstein, Maxine

Abstract

We investigated the contributions of income and wealth (beyond education) to Black–White disparities in cognition and evaluated whether the role of socioeconomic status (SES) varies by age. Based on data from a national survey of Americans (aged 23–94), we used regression models to quantify the overall racial disparities in episodic memory, executive function, and overall cognition, adjusted for sex and age. Potential mediators (i.e., measures of childhood environment, educational attainment, marital status, occupation, income, and wealth) were added in subsequent models. The age- and sex-adjusted Black–White differential in overall cognitive function was around one standard deviation (SD) between ages 25 and 50, but declined to 0.6 SD by age 80. Executive function followed a similar pattern, but the racial disparity in episodic memory declined more rapidly between ages 35 (0.7 SD) and 80 (0.2 SD). Childhood environment and the respondent's educational attainment accounted for 20–25% of the racial disparities in overall cognition. The incremental contribution of household income was small (1–5%). Although wealth had only a small effect at younger ages, the contribution grew with age. Wealth was much more important than income in explaining Black–White disparities in cognition at older ages. Childhood environment, marital status, and SES (including wealth) accounted for one-third of the racial disparity in overall cognition at ages 35–65, but an even greater share at age 80. Our study is the first to demonstrate that, with increasing age, wealth explains more of the Black–White disparity in cognition. A widening racial gap in wealth and the disproportionate financial impact of the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic on minorities do not bode well for Black-White differentials in cognition. Working-age Americans suffered the brunt of the economic impact of those events; the impact on cognition may increase as those cohorts grow older.

Suggested Citation

  • Glei, Dana A. & Lee, Chioun & Weinstein, Maxine, 2022. "Income, wealth, and Black-White disparities in cognition," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 310(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:310:y:2022:i:c:s0277953622006049
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115298
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953622006049
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115298?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dionissi Aliprantis & Daniel R. Carroll, 2019. "What Is Behind the Persistence of the Racial Wealth Gap?," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue February.
    2. Kathleen A. Cagney & Diane S. Lauderdale, 2002. "Education, Wealth, and Cognitive Function in Later Life," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 57(2), pages 163-172.
    3. Lisa L. Barnes & Robert S. Wilson & Liesi E. Hebert & Paul A. Scherr & Denis A. Evans & Carlos F. Mendes de Leon, 2011. "Racial Differences in the Association of Education With Physical and Cognitive Function in Older Blacks and Whites," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 66(3), pages 354-363.
    4. Katrina M Walsemann & Stephanie Ureña & Mateo P Farina & Jennifer A Ailshire, 2022. "Race Inequity in School Attendance Across the Jim Crow South and Its Implications for Black–White Disparities in Trajectories of Cognitive Function Among Older Adults," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 77(8), pages 1467-1477.
    5. Janessa O. Carvalho & Doug Tommet & Paul K. Crane & Michael L. Thomas & Amy Claxton & Christian Habeck & Jennifer J. Manly & Heather R. Romero, 2015. "Deconstructing Racial Differences: The Effects of Quality of Education and Cerebrovascular Risk Factors," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 70(4), pages 545-556.
    6. Shannon Sisco & Alden L. Gross & Regina A. Shih & Bonnie C. Sachs & M. Maria Glymour & Katherine J. Bangen & Andreana Benitez & Jeannine Skinner & Brooke C. Schneider & Jennifer J. Manly, 2015. "The Role of Early-Life Educational Quality and Literacy in Explaining Racial Disparities in Cognition in Late Life," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 70(4), pages 557-567.
    7. Aditya Aladangady & Akila Forde, 2021. "Wealth Inequality and the Racial Wealth Gap," FEDS Notes 2021-10-22, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    8. Kharine R Jean & Cutter A Lindbergh & Catherine M Mewborn & Talia L Robinson & Marissa A Gogniat & L Stephen Miller & Angela Gutchess, 2019. "Education Differentially Buffers Cognitive Performance in Black and White Older Adults," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 74(8), pages 1366-1375.
    9. Rachel L Peterson & Emily A Butler & John E Ehiri & Mindy J Fain & Scott C Carvajal & Deborah Carr, 2021. "Mechanisms of Racial Disparities in Cognitive Aging: An Examination of Material and Psychosocial Well-Being [Perceived stress and change in cognitive function among adults 65 years and older]," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 76(3), pages 574-582.
    10. Neil Bhutta & Andrew C. Chang & Lisa J. Dettling & Joanne W. Hsu, 2020. "Disparities in Wealth by Race and Ethnicity in the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances," FEDS Notes 2020-09-28-2, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    11. Farmer, Melissa M. & Ferraro, Kenneth F., 2005. "Are racial disparities in health conditional on socioeconomic status?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 191-204, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kuhn, Moritz & Bartscher, Alina & Schularick, Moritz & Wachtel, Paul, 2021. "Monetary policy and racial inequality," CEPR Discussion Papers 15734, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. McDonough, Ian M. & Byrd, DeAnnah R. & Choi, Shinae L., 2023. "Resilience resources may buffer some middle-aged and older Black Americans from memory decline despite experiencing discrimination," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 316(C).
    3. Katrina M. Walsemann & Calley E. Fisk & Mateo P. Farina & Emily Abbruzzi & Jennifer A. Ailshire, 2023. "Race, gender, and cohort differences in the educational experiences of Black and White Americans," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 42(6), pages 1-23, December.
    4. Nicole Schneeweis & Vegard Skirbekk & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2012. "Does schooling improve cognitive functioning at older ages?," Economics working papers 2012-11, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    5. Danielle Shaked & Zachary B Millman & Danielle L Beatty Moody & William F Rosenberger & Hui Shao & Leslie I Katzel & Christos Davatzikos & Rao P Gullapalli & Stephen L Seliger & Guray Erus & Michele K, 2019. "Sociodemographic disparities in corticolimbic structures," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-21, May.
    6. Evans, Clare R. & Williams, David R. & Onnela, Jukka-Pekka & Subramanian, S.V., 2018. "A multilevel approach to modeling health inequalities at the intersection of multiple social identities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 64-73.
    7. Katrina M Walsemann & Stephanie Ureña & Mateo P Farina & Jennifer A Ailshire, 2022. "Race Inequity in School Attendance Across the Jim Crow South and Its Implications for Black–White Disparities in Trajectories of Cognitive Function Among Older Adults," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 77(8), pages 1467-1477.
    8. Shervin Assari & Susan D. Cochran & Vickie M. Mays, 2021. "Money Protects White but Not African American Men against Discrimination: Comparison of African American and White Men in the Same Geographic Areas," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(5), pages 1-12, March.
    9. Shervin Assari & Maryam Moghani Lankarani, 2018. "Educational Attainment Promotes Fruit and Vegetable Intake for Whites but Not Blacks," J, MDPI, vol. 1(1), pages 1-13, June.
    10. Scharoun-Lee, Melissa & Adair, Linda S. & Kaufman, Jay S. & Gordon-Larsen, Penny, 2009. "Obesity, race/ethnicity and the multiple dimensions of socioeconomic status during the transition to adulthood: A factor analysis approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(4), pages 708-716, February.
    11. Matteo Crosignani & Hanh Le, 2023. "Stakeholders’ Aversion to Inequality and Bank Lending to Minorities," Staff Reports 1079, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    12. Kai Hu & Jo Mhairi Hale & Hill Kulu & Yang Liu & Katherine Keenan & Jessica Kelley, 2023. "A Longitudinal Analysis of the Association Between Long-Term Exposure to Air Pollution and Cognitive Function Among Adults Aged 45 and Older in China," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 78(3), pages 556-569.
    13. John Iceland & Arthur Sakamoto, 2022. "The Prevalence of Hardship by Race and Ethnicity in the USA, 1992–2019," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(5), pages 2001-2036, October.
    14. Casanova, Maria & Aguila, Emma, 2020. "Gender differences in cognitive function among older Mexican immigrants," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 16(C).
    15. Matthew Jay Lyons & Senaida Fernandez Poole & Ross C. Brownson & Rodney Lyn, 2022. "Place Is Power: Investing in Communities as a Systemic Leverage Point to Reduce Breast Cancer Disparities by Race," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(2), pages 1-13, January.
    16. Ameed Saabneh, 2015. "Ethnic Health Inequalities in Unequal Societies: Morbidity Gaps Between Palestinians and Jews in Israel," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 31(4), pages 445-466, October.
    17. Grzegorz Bulczak & Alexi Gugushvili & Olga Zelinska, 2022. "How are social origin, destination and mobility linked to physical, mental, and self-rated health? Evidence from the United States," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(5), pages 3555-3585, October.
    18. Bradley Bereitschaft, 2023. "The changing ethno-racial profile of ‘very walkable’ urban neighbourhoods in the US (2010–2020): Are minorities under-represented?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(4), pages 638-654, March.
    19. Jo M. Hale & Daniel C. Schneider & Neil K. Mehta & Mikko Myrskylä, 2022. "Understanding cognitive impairment in the U.S. through the lenses of intersectionality and (un)conditional cumulative (dis)advantage," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2022-029, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    20. Jesse Bricker & Sarena Goodman & Alice Henriques Volz & Kevin B. Moore, 2021. "A Wealth of Information: Augmenting the Survey of Consumer Finances to Characterize the Full U.S. Wealth Distribution," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-053, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:310:y:2022:i:c:s0277953622006049. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.